Race Track Food

 Hanging out at a recent midweek practice session at Senoia Raceway, I felt right at home when I saw a can of Vienna Sausage Bites among the snacks Bubba Pollard’s crew had laid out for their driver.

Vienna sausages may not measure up to some folk’s culinary standards, but they are a popular treat for many, including a good number of old-school racers.

  NASCAR team owner Eddie Wood often makes a meal of viennas and crackers. (I’ve seen him fish them out the can using the keys to his rental car.)

You can tell who eat them regularly by watching how they remove them from the can they come in. There are seven sausages packed into the tin. The best way to fish them out is to take some utensil and jiggle the gaps between the sausages to loosen them up. Then pull out the center one and the rest will come out whole too. Otherwise they will get all chopped up before you ever get them out of the can.

While some prefer to eat them with plain “soda crackers” I prefer Ritz crackers, or the knock-off brand.

Old-school racers and race fans also have their favorite concession foods. South Boston Speedway in Virginia is known for its fried bologna burgers.

  Senoia Raceway has begun offering its own version of the fried bologna sandwich. Both tracks use thick slices of bologna. While South Boston uses regular hamburger buns, Senoia uses loaf bread. I was skeptical of the loaf bread at first but now I’m a fan.

You can get a fried bologna combo (sandwich, chips and 20-ounce drink) at Senoia for just $6. The kind ladies at the trackside concession stand will let you upgrade to French fries instead of chips for $2 more. I recommend that.

Of course the granddaddy of all old-school concession food is the Martinsville Speedway hot dog. Even a California kid like Matt DiBenedetto, Eddie Wood’s driver, now eats multiple Martinsville dogs at a single sitting.

The good cooks at Martinsville steam the buns then drop in a Jesse Jones hot dog (they look like little red links inside and out) and cover it with mild chili, sweet coleslaw and mustard. You can get them with or without onions, and they come wrapped in wax paper. After all these years, they’re still just two bucks apiece.

Martinsville Speedway is run by Clay Campbell, the grandson of track founder Clay Earles and one of the nicest people you’ll meet in or out of auto racing.

I called Clay the other day to talk hot dogs, and ask him about the time the track tried changed to the hot dogs, kind of like when Coca-Cola executives came up with New Coke.

Clay said he’s had two major crises in his time running Martinsville. One was when the track came apart during a Cup race and a chunk of concrete busted the radiator of the lead car driven by Jeff Gordon. The other was when they messed with the hot dogs.

“It was a business decision,” Clay said. “We did a lot of taste testing to be sure we had the new ones just as good as the old. There was nothing crazy about it.”
The debut of the new dog led to a major uproar – in the garage and out.

  Within hours the old dogs were back.

“Once we got them back right, we will not change them again,” Clay said, adding that the hot dogs, which have been around since the 1960s, have become as big a part of the track’s history as its grandfather clock trophies that go to race winners.

“We didn’t plan it that way, but they’ve both become iconic, signature parts of our heritage,” he said.

Maybe one day Senoia’s bologna sandwich will be a part of its history and heritage too.



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